"Lumley, Brian - E-Branch 2 - Invaders" - читать интересную книгу автора (Lumley Brian)

What was it that was playing now? Damn, the tunes had kind of run together in Hindi's head; he had heard them so often, he knew what was coming next! Mr rich-foreign-handsome-bloody-bastard Milan kept playing them in sequence, in some kind of order of preference. But it was the order of disorder, totally out of order, to Hinch's way of thinking.
Oh, yes \a151 now he remembered \a151 Zorba's Dance, that was it! All bouzoukis, fast drumbeats, and Anthony bloody Quinn dancing

on a beach! A Greek thing that was almost as much an antique as the machine that played it. One of those tunes that never dies, one which as far as Hinch was concerned could die any time it fucking well liked! And of course as the tune ended, Hinch knew the next item in the circular, never-ending repertoire. And here it came yet again:
'Sunshine, you may find my window but you won't find me...' Some kind of blues with a Country and Western flavour, and lyrics too deep for Hinch to understand...pleasing to listen to, even soothing, in a way...if you hadn't heard it half a dozen times already this very night! Some old black guy, singing his heart out about misery. But to Hinch's mind the only misery lay in having to listen to it over and over again.
'So, you don't care for my music, Mr Hinch?' The voice was deep yet oiled; it seemed to rumble, or purr, yet was in no way cat-like. On the other hand, Milan's movements were cat-like as he came from the bar with a drink in his long-fingered hand, to gaze out on the night through an open window.
But if it wasn't painted black, (Hinch thought), there'd \\>e no need to open the fucking thing! Not that there's anything to see out there. While out loud he said, 'Er, did I say something about your music? I have a habit of talking to myself while I'm working. It doesn't mean anything.' Oh yes it fucking does! It means that I'm pissed to death with you, and your bloody music, and with bloody Kanadu, and all of this bloody black paint!
He looked down on Milan from a height of some twelve feet, from a wheeled scaffolding tower where he had just put the finishing touches to the last pane of a high window. And that was it: the entire interior surface, every square foot of hundreds of square feet of glass, varnished for adhesion, painted black, and finally layered with polyurethane lacquer for durability. A double-dyed bastard of a job!
'Perhaps I don't pay you enough?' said Milan, as Hinch put down his roller, wiped his hands, came clambering down from on high.
'The money's fine,' the bad-tempered Hinch said. He stood

six feet tall, but still had to lift his head a fraction to look up at his employer. 'And I'd like it now, for I'm all done.'
'Then if the payment is fine,' said Milan, 'it can only be that I was right and it's the music. Or perhaps it's me? Do you find my presence unsettling?'
While he was speaking, Hinch had checked him out \a151 again. For Aristotle Milan was the kind of man you looked at twice. At a guess he'd be maybe forty, forty-five years old. Difficult to be more specific than that, because his looks were sort of timeless. He was probably sixty but topped-up with expensive monkey hormones or some such. Something was running through his veins, keeping him young, for sure. Spoiled, rich bastard!
But foreign? Even without the name to give him away, there could be no mistaking that: Italian with a touch of Greek \a151 but in any case a mongrel, in Hinch's eyes. Milan's hair was black as night; worn long, it swept back from a high, broad forehead, and its shining ringlets curled on his shoulders. And handsome: he had the kind of Mediterranean looks that seemed to appeal to a lot of women. Hinch would guess that his bedroom crawled with all kinds of young, good-looking, dirty women.
His ears were fleshy \a151 what could be seen of them \a151 but he wore his sideboards thick and lacquered back to cover the upper extremities. Something odd about his nose, too: a flatfish look to it, as if Nature had pushed it back a little too far, and his nostrils were too large and flaring. And then those arcing eyebrows over deep-sunken, jet-black eyes...those eyes that were Milan's most startling feature. Jet-black, and yet Hinch couldn't be certain. Catch them at the right angle, they'd sometimes gleam a golden, feral yellow. And despite the nose, still those eyes loaned Milan the looks of a bird of prey.
But handsome? Maybe Hinch was all wrong about that. It was simply the attraction of Milan's odd \a151 his strange or foreign, his almost alien \a151 features, that was all. And as for Mediterranean: well, that didn't seem quite right either, not with the cold pallor of his flesh, and the blood red of his lips. He was something of

a weird one, this Milan, for sure. Something of an enigma. An unknown or unspecified quantity.
'Payment when the job is done,' Milan spoke again, the rumble lower than ever. 'Which it isn't, not quite, not yet.'
'What?' Hinch stared hard at him, tried to look hard, too \a151 difficult with a man as sure of himself as Milan. Or as sure of his filthy money! But Hinch reckoned that for all his lousy millions, still Milan would be a cinch in a fight. Hinch was a powerful, brutal fighter, the victor of a dozen rough-house brawls. And Milan \a151 he had the hands of a pianist, fingers like a girl! Hw^/Hinch would bet his life that Milan had never felt a bunch of knuckles bouncing off that ugly nose of his. And the thought never occurred to him that he had already bet his life.
Cocking his head a little on one side, Milan looked at him curiously, sighed and said, 'First it's my music, and then it's because you've had to work late into the night, and now...now it's personal, to the point that you insult me and even measure your physical strength against mine, like an opponent...as if you could ever be an opponent. Or is it all just jealousy?'
And suddenly it sank into Hinch's less than enormous brain that while he'd thought all of these things, he hadn't actually voiced any of them \a151 not even about the music! Was he that easy to read?
But he was tired of all this, and so, changing the subject he said, 'What's that about the job not being finished? I mean, you wouldn't be trying to avoid paying me - would you?' And the threat in his words, the way he growled them, was obvious.
'Not at all,' Milan told him. 'Payment is most certainly, very definitely due. And you shall have it. But out there \a151 on the outside of the dome, just a little to the left of this open window here \a151 there's a spot you missed. And I suffer from this affliction: I can't deal with too much sunlight. My eyes and my skin are vulnerable. And so, you see, while sunshine may find my window, it must never find me. The work must be finished, to my satisfaction. That was our contract, Mr Hinch.'

God damn this weird bastard! Hinch thought, as he paced to the window, leaned out (but carefully,) and looked to the left. But: 'God?' said Milan, from close behind. 'Your god, Mr Hinch? Well, if there is such a Being - and if his sphere of influence is as extensive as you suppose - I think you may safely assume that he "damned" me a very long time ago.'
'Eh?' said Hinch, looking back into the dome, surprised by and wondering at the sudden change in Milan's tone of voice. Milan moved or flowed closer; his slim fingers were strong where they came down on Hindi's hand, trapping it on the window sill. And leaning closer still, with his face just inches away, he smiled and hissed, 'You don't much care for heights, do you, Mr Hinch? In fact you care for them even less than you care for me, or for my music.'
'What the bloody...?' Hinch looked into eyes that were no longer black or feral but uniformly red, flaring like lamps.'
'Bloody?' the other repeated him, his voice a phlegmy gurgle now, full of lust, and his breath a hot, coppery stench in Hindi's face. 'Ah, yesssss! But not your blood, not this time, Mr Hinch. Your blood is unworthy. You are unworthy!'
'Jesus Christ!' Hinch gasped, choked, tried to draw away -and failed.
'Call on who or whatever you like.' Milan continued to pin him to the window ledge, and moved his free hand to the back of Hinch's thick neck. 'No one and nothing can help you now.'
'You're a fucking madman!' Hinch jerked and wriggled, but he couldn't pull free. The other's strength was unbelievable.
'And you...you are nothing!' Milan told him, continuing to smile, or at least doing something with his face.
Hinch saw it, but didn't believe it: the way Milan's lips curled back and away from his elongating jaws, the teeth curving up through his splitting gums, his ridged, convoluted nose flattening back, while his nostrils gaped and sniffed. And the red blood dripping from the corner of his mouth.
Then Milan freed Hinch's hand in order to clench his fist and

hit him in his ribs - such a blow that Hinch, burly as he was, was lifted from his feet. At the same time, Milan hoisted him by the scruff of the neck and tilted him forward; concerted movements designed to topple him into space.
And as the shrieking Hinch flipped out into the night, so the Thing that looked like a man released him.
Hinch fell, but only for a moment. Then his shriek became a gasp as he came down on his belly and cracked ribs across the safety rail of a painter's platform slung between twin gantries. From above, seven or eight feet to the open window, Hinch heard Milan's cursing. And struggling to his feet inside the platform he looked up - to see that hideous, livid face looking down on him!
Then, moving like liquid lightning, Milan was up onto the window ledge, and light as a feather came leaping to the bouncing, rocking platform. His intentions were unmistakable, and as he landed Hinch went to kick him in the groin. Milan caught his foot, twisted it until the ankle broke, then reached out with a long arm to grab the other's throat. And without pause, lifting Hinch bodily into the air, he thrust him out beyond the rim of the safety rail \a151 and let him fall.
As Hinch fell \a151 grasping at thin air and failing to catch it \a151 he was aware that Milan was speaking to him one last time. But whether it was a physical voice he heard, a chuckling whisper in his head, or simply something imagined, he couldn't have said. And he certainly didn't have time to worry about it.
Paid in fully the crazed voice whispered. For your insults if not for your work. So be it!
And below, crashing down head first, Hinch was dead before the pain had time to register. Like an egg dropped on the floor, the contents of his skull splattered at first. But the grey was soon drowned in a thick, night-dark pool that formed around his shattered head.
While up above, that terrible face continued to smile down on him...for a little while, until Aristotle Milan's features melted

7


PART ONE